At the '84 Olympics, Jordan led the U.S. to gold -- and also won over Bobby Knight

September 10, 2009|By David Haugh

On one side of the chalkboard inside the locker room of the Forum, Bob Knight had posted his defensive reminders for the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team. On the other side were instructions for Knight's patented motion offense.

This was ground Knight typically covered minutes before tipoff. But Aug. 10, 1984, was no ordinary night in the City of Angels or across America. This was the moment U.S. basketball had been waiting for since 1976, the last time Americans had played for a gold medal in the Olympics, in Montreal.

As Knight walked in, wearing his familiar mask of intensity, he noticed his players' heads were uncharacteristically down -- all except Michael Jordan's.

Between his offensive and defensive game plans was a yellow sheet of legal paper. "Coach," it said, "don't worry. We've put up with too much s--- to lose now."

If the handwriting wasn't recognizable, Knight knew the tone was signature Jordan. Somewhere, Knight still has that sheet of paper.

"I looked at it, and only Jordan would write something like that," Knight recalled in a phone interview from his Lubbock, Texas, office. "After that, I knew we were ready. So all I said to them was, 'All right, go get the gold medal.'"

Before the tip, Knight sensed Jordan's teammates would respond, telling assistant coaches Don Donoher and C.M. Newton the game would be decided in the first five minutes.

And it was. The U.S. relentlessly attacked Spain in a 96-65 victory to make the Jordan-led team the last American amateur men's basketball team to win gold. Jordan, Knight's captain, had a game-high 20 points.

"Everybody on that team realized how much pressure was on us to win gold, and the only way we could have lost that game was if we were uptight," said Steve Alford, a member of that team. "So Michael doing what he did, writing that note to coach, was a great way to break the ice and erase all the tension."

Alford, now coaching at New Mexico, knew Knight as well as any 1984 Olympian after having just completed his freshman season at Indiana. Playing for the complex, demanding coach is a walk through an emotional minefield. Alford marveled at how deftly Jordan navigated his way with Knight.

"There's nobody else on that team who could have pulled [the note] off, I can tell you that," Alford said. "Michael was able to get away with it because somehow he could get to coach and make him laugh."

Today, Knight calls Jordan "the greatest player ever in a team sport," comparing him to Babe Ruth and Jim Brown.

But back in the spring of 1984, the irascible coach had seen the tape on Jordan and had heard what his dear friend, then-North Carolina coach Dean Smith, had told him. And when Knight had seen Jordan with his own eyes, Indiana's Dan Dakich was on his way to becoming a folk hero after holding Jordan to 13 points in the Hoosiers' NCAA East Regional semifinals win over Jordan's Tar Heels.

So on the eve of the start of Olympic tryouts, Knight was curious to see which Jordan would report to Bloomington, Ind., with 73 other college players.

Jordan quickly earned Knight's trust, not necessarily for what he did on the court but for how he did it. Of all of Jordan's skills, Knight believes the greatest was his will to win. Jordan was demanding of himself and his teammates -- in that order -- and Knight quickly sensed he could trust Jordan enough to pull him aside.

"I remember telling Mike very early, 'I'm going to get on your ass and some days you may not understand why," said Knight, the winningest college basketball coach ever after a career at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech. "I'm going to say something to you and the ears of the other guys are going to perk up, and they're going to say, 'Damn, if he will be like that with Jordan then I better take care of my [game].' And he was fine with that. That's the direction the team took in large part because of him. This was his team, and that's why I made him the captain."

One day during at an Olympic practice before the June NBA draft, Knight remembered standing next to an NBA team executive, whom he refuses to identify.

"I was standing next to my friend as we watched us practice and I said, 'You're luckier than anybody could be in basketball, you have a chance to get Jordan,'" Knight said. "He said, 'Yeah, Bob, he's great, but we need a big man.' And I told him, 'Play Jordan at center and he'll lead the league in scoring. He's that good.'"

Jordan practiced like he was playing for a medal -- at the end of practice. It impressed his teammates and Knight, whose practices were notoriously grueling, his reputation for being difficult on players well-earned. As Wayman Tisdale once described Knight's approach to the Los Angeles Times: "Bobby Knight was a raging maniac. He put us through pure hell."